I am a solo war gamer endlessly searching for old Peter Laing figures, and the perfect war-game rules to use with them

Monday, October 13, 2014

Unusual Wargaming Inspiration

My wife and I are on vacation this week and are preparing to go camping one last time. My wife wants to go to the "Sheep & Yarn Festival" in Rhinebeck, NY. For me it was an excuse to try out our new camper for the week. Also, it is close to Sleepy Hollow, of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" fame. We have visited Sleepy Hollow before, but I might try to get there this week.

Now Halloween is my favorite time of the year, and with my wife working Saturday I spent the day watching ghost stories on Youtube. One I watched was from a series from England named "A Ghost Story for Christmas". This story was called "A View from a Hill". At one point the main characters were standing on a hilltop viewing the surrounding country side and one pointed out a village and mentioned of "some battle fought in the Civil War". The scene made me think of what the battle would have looked like from that vantage point. I also watched "Matthew Hopkins; Witchfinder General" starring Vincent Price. This movie took place during the English Civil War. I now find myself wanting to use my Peter Laing ECW. I don't have many figures but I have also ordered "One Hour Wargames" by Neil Thomas. Based on Bob Cordery's review, it seems like the rules call for a small number of figures, and the rules are very basic. The book is not yet available in the states, but hopefully by the time we return from vacation I will have some idea of when the book will be shipped.

I still haven't found my camera but borrowed my wife's camera to take some shots of the Minifigs/Hinchcliffe? landscape pieces.

The bridge assembled and painted. Forgive the poor quality of the pictures; it's been a couple of years since using the camera.

The brick wall, with a Peter Laing peasant behind for scale. The picture is from slightly above, which makes the wall shorter than it actually is.

The hedgerows. Unfortunately the SD card at this point was full and I couldn't take a photo of the stonewall. These pieces would be good for my ECW wargame. I am thinking of trying to cut a sample down to 1 inch long pieces to see if they could be useful at this length. As I have about 24 pieces of each, the loss of one wouldn't be too bad.

Ian, I do believe you are right. One thing that I remember from the System 12 ad was the bridge, which looks a lot like the one I got. I wish I had time to try to paint some of the hedgerows for the photos.